engaged tone BrE
engaged signal BrE
busy signal AmE
busy tone AmE

It means customers never get an engaged tone and then call our competitors instead.

The programme said the high number of calls meant some people were greeted by engaged tones.

I heard him laugh like an engaged tone.

He got the engaged tone and hung up.

I've spent hours, literally, dialling and re-dialling the place only to get the engaged tone every time.

The engaged tone caused him to slam the receiver down with a force that threatened to shatter the entire telephone.

However, the phone number was besieged by callers during the showing and many people who telephoned it simply got an engaged tone.

The engaged tone.

The engaged tone bleeping in Robyn's ear confirmed the good sense of this judgement, but she put down the receiver reluctantly.

If the user receives a recording that all lines are busy or engaged tone then MTPAS is not being utilised.

The others got him an engaged tone before he'd even finished punching in the town exchanges, and on the last a computer voice broke in and said, "All lines are engaged.

He left the phone on the bed, engaged tone beeping mindlessly while he dressed, then took the Porsche on a long, frosty, starlit drive north, almost to the Cairngorms.

The tune Telephone and Rubber Band by the Penguin Cafe Orchestra was created using a tape loop that merged the UK engaged tone with the UK ringback tone.

A busy signal (or busy tone or engaged tone) in telephony is an audible or visual signal to the calling party that indicates failure to complete the requested connection of that particular telephone call.

After obtaining first the engaged tone and then the unobtainable tone - that would not happen now after privatisation - the caller was finally connected to an answerphone which said: 'This is Tim and Bridie Wallis's number.